Artist Blog | Patch & The Giant confess to all that they stole – Part 5

Ahead of the release of their debut album early next year, welcome to the fifth and final instalment of a five-part confessional from members of Patch & The Giant as they admit to past crimes of the light-fingered variety, and offer up a short playlist. Completing the line-up is Nick…

The title of our debut album is All That We Had, We Stole and we thought it would be fitting to include in the artwork a few things which we have actually stolen over the years. It wasn’t our intention to create a reputation as a kleptomaniac group of musicians but perhaps the things which we chose to steal – and why – will give a new insight into each of us. To make you like us a little more and judge us a little less, we’ve each created a playlist based on the stolen item, stealing or whatever else our minds are harbouring.

Thanks very much to our good friend Graham Treadwell for the sketches.

***

NICK

A Wooden Giraffe

The best (or worst) thing I have stolen is a four-foot ornamental wooden giraffe. It has a fair amount of emotional significance for me because I stole it from someone after a trip to Africa. I used to spend good time travelling and volunteering there, so the giraffe came to represent something important to me. It now lives in my music room. I once had a dream it was standing next to my bed whispering, but I couldn’t make out what it was saying.

***

Here is a collection of songs that have stayed with me over the years. Some of them have inspired me to keep working on music, others have made me run faster, be thankful for things I had or have lost, make me sleep less, learn new instruments, dance more, cry, dance whilst crying or just think whimsically that there is nothing like music to remind you who you are and what strange and often unexpected meanings there are to be found in living.

I often wish I could understand why certain songs have specific emotional significance, like the way a song can open a door to a specific frame of time from the past, or a person you had somehow forgotten that you loved, or the feeling of some youthful anticipation of the unknown. But it doesn’t really matter, probably all that matters is that some songs still hold the power to completely change my mental state, without any normal kind of warning, and catch me unaware, and in an unforeseen way make me realise there is something good in everything we feel, because it can be expressed and used to push us to new, unpredicted places.